Comment from Hyder, Marie

The prospect of opening the seabed off the Eastern shore for mining is totally misguided!! The process this Florida-based company has requested from the Dept. of the Interior to extract heavy minerals from the ocean floor in a process involving industrial-scale dredging, with heavy machinery designed to break up and remove enormous volumes of seafloor sediment will destroy the Eastern Seaboard. That process would bring a massive disruption to species and habitat, impacting fish spawning grounds, important migration routes and the complex marine food webs that both species and coastal communities rely on. Marine animals like sea turtles, fish and whale species could face increased vessel collisions, degraded water quality and other threats that could impact their long-term survival. Local fisheries and tourism could also be adversely impacted, jeopardizing local jobs and millions of dollars in economic activity for coastal states. The water quality and ecology could even be changed by seabed mining. This Florida company has NO BUSINESS disrupting and destroying our local ecology. Climate change has wreaked enough havoc without more manmade destruction.